Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless

Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless

CROWD
FP7 ICT Objective 1.1 Future Networks
Connectivity management for eneRgy
Optimised Wireless Dense network
The CROWD consortium, including partners from Italy, France, Spain, and Germany,
aims at exploiting extreme density in the wireless networks of the future proposing
novel and optimised connectivity management, energy saving, backhaul and MAC
enhancements for IEEE 802.11 and 3GPP LTE.
At A Glance: CROWD
Connectivity management for eneRgy
Optimised Wireless Dense network
Project Coordinator
Claudio Cicconetti
Intecs S.p.A
Tel: +39 0509657451
Fax: +39 0509657400
Email: [email protected]
Project website: www.ict-crowd.eu
Partners: Intecs (IT), Alcatel-Lucent Bell
Labs (FR), Institute IMDEA Networks
(ES), Orange (FR), Signalion (DE), Univ.
Carlos III Madrid (ES), Univ. Paderborn
(DE)
CROWD: high-capacity energy and resourceefficient wireless dense networks
Wireless data communication is a constituent part of
everyday life for hundreds of millions of people. From social
networking to Internet-assisted navigation, from voice and
infotainment to online gaming, mobile communication
devices have become essential to fully live everyday
interpersonal relations as well as participate in nation-wide
and world-wide events. The consequence is twofold. First,
the number of wireless users is rapidly increasing, the
offered load doubling every year.
Second,
expecting
high-quality
Increasing
the
services and high data rates is
density of points
becoming
normal
rather
than
of access and
exceptional. The solution to cope with
combining
this growing traffic demand necessarily
different wireless
entails using more points of access, by
technologies
increasing
their
density
(dense
network deployments) and/or by using
different
wireless
technologies
(heterogeneous
deployments). In this context, the CROWD project aims at
building high-capacity energy and resource-efficient wireless
dense networks. To do so, the project will devise novel
mechanisms for connectivity management, energyefficient operation, scheduling and random access MAC
enhancements, and dynamic backhaul optimisation.
Duration: 01,2013 – 06,2015
The technology developed by the project will be designed
taking into account the requirements for commercial
Total Cost: € 4.460.332
deployment. Exploitation plans comprise a thorough
roadmap for standardisation that includes the support
EC Contribution: € 2.978.000
letters from chairs of the relevant groups at IETF, IRTF,
Contract Number: CNECT-ICT-318115
IEEE and Femto Forum. The research conducted in
CROWD will also aim at driving the mobile network
evolution while strengthening current mobile core and
wireless access solutions, yielding new and enhanced
products with improved user performance, in addition to IPR
generation (when applicable) as well as dissemination in prestigious scientific fora.
Funding scheme: STREP
Technical Approach
Key Issues
The CROWD architecture comprises the following
key functionalities:
• Connectivity management mechanisms to
exploit new opportunities due to the density of
access points.
• Energy efficient operation mechanisms,
able to provide network-wide energy savings
and traffic-proportional consumption.
• 802.11 MAC optimisation to understand and
solve performance misbehaviours due to the
network density.
• LTE MAC optimisation, including inter-cell
cooperation, scheduling, link adaptation and
power control.
• Backhaul optimisation for dynamic loadbased reconfiguration.
• Global control framework, able to configure
the network for global optimal operation.
CROWD aims at developing a novel networking
framework that can satisfy future traffic demands
by leveraging density and heterogeneity.
The technical activities are grouped into five WPs:
WP1 activities are the collection and consolidation
of the requirements and use cases, and the
definition of the high-level system architecture.
WP2 focuses on MAC enhancements that enable
the dense deployment of wide and local radio
access networks.
WP3 looks at mechanisms for configuring radio
access and backhaul networks, in terms of energy
efficiency, coverage, and capacity (medium-long
timescale).
WP4 deals with optimisations operating on a
connection level time-scale, and targets the
access selection and discovery in highly dense
wireless environments.
In WP5 representative test bed experiments are
performed to validate the proposed solutions.
The framework comprises small and large LTE
cells, overlapping with each other and with
WiFi hotspots. As such, the framework accounts
for managed (LTE-like) and unmanaged (WiFilike) deployments in the same geographical areas.
Another key component of the CROWD
framework
is
the
dynamic
backhaul
reconfiguration: because of the high density and
heterogeneity of nodes, in the CROWD scenario it
is not advisable to perform a static separation
between access nodes an hub nodes, instead
CROWD goes beyond a two-tier role division and
dynamically assign functions (control, relaying,
etc.) to base stations and backhaul nodes.
Moreover to overcome the limitations of the
centralised nature of mobility protocols such as
the sub-optimal routing (the packets between the
peer nodes are not exchanged directly following
the shortest path but must cross the operator
network) and the management services defined
per terminal (services that are not able to discern
traffic with mobility requirement from other traffic)
CROWD introduces the Distributed Mobility
Management Mobility Agent, which tackles, in a
distributed manner, connectivity management
issues for mobile nodes.
Expected Impact
Definition of a vendor-independent model and
interface, able to provide an “open SON”
mechanism in managed and unmanaged very
dense wireless networks.
CROWD
February 2013